September 5, 2006

Equilibrate

I learned a new word last week. Brenda and I were doing freeway time between Asheville, North Carolina and Orlando, Florida. That's a far piece, an opportunity for culturally-diverse channel surfing on the few available radio stations. But National Public Radio came in strong, so we laughed as Garrison Kiellor described the children of Lake Wobegon, laughed even harder as Klick and Klack suggested personality retrofits for impossible car problems, and then tried to outdo the panelists on the show "Wait, Wait, Don't tell me."

Somewhere deep in one of those hours, an NPR voice used the word "equilibrate." No one defined it. No one used it in an understandable sentence. It just hung there assuming that we would know exactly what it meant. However, neither of us had ever heard "equilibrate" before and assumed it was one of those new "made-up" words that might someday default into everyday slanguage.

How humbling it was to discover that Microsoft WORD and ENCARTA already have it defined in their electronic dictionary!

e•quîl•i•brate
To be evenly balanced, or counterbalance something, or bring something into a state of balance.

EQUILIBRATE. As in:
"to quit working three twelve-hour shifts in a row without going home to feed the cat."

"to eat a diet that doesn't include anything pre-packaged, caffeinated, or left over from yesterday's office meeting."

"to drive I-4 just barely over the speed limit."

"to spend ten minutes this evening watching the sunset."

"to give balance to another who is crashing."

I added that last definition when Susan told me about finding a "well-loved" Bible while doing an archaeological dig in the Orlando campus Lost-and-Found. There was no name in the Bible, but the pages showed many years of loving caresses. One worn-out old Bible. Nameless. Disconnected from its owner. Alone. Out of balance.

Susan let it set for a few days, trying to think how to find its owner. Then one morning she picked it up and let it fall open to where the spine had been creased by excessive use. "This will be the owner's favorite text," she thought.

A tiny slip of paper was caught in the pages where it opened, a paper with a nearly-faded phone number written with a shaky hand. When Susan called the number, "equilibrate" happened.

"You've found Grandpa's Bible!" the woman screamed. "Sixteen months ago when Grandpa died no one could find his Bible. We've looked everywhere, and the hospital staff has looked too. But you found it! Praise God! Everything's going to be OK now."

"It was just a lost Bible," Susan told me, "but for his family it was like the last piece of a very personal puzzle. Finding it brought everything back into balance."

Sin disconnects us from God, and spins our lives totally out of balance. But God is not willing for things to stay that way. "Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and makes us alive in Christ." Those are Paul's words from the second part of his letter to the believers in Ephesus. He could have added, "God's love equilibrates us."

Dick Duerksen
Storyteller